Tripwire
"Mrs. Hobie?" Jodie asked.
"Yes?" the voice said again, wavering. Jodie pictured her, an old, infirm woman, gray, thin, probably wearing a flowery housecoat, gripping an ancient receiver in an old dark house smelling of stale food and furniture wax.
"Mrs. Hobie, I’m Jodie Garber, Leon Garber’s daughter."
"Yes?" the woman said again.
"He died, I’m afraid, five days ago."
"Yes, I know," the old woman said. She sounded sad about it. "Dr. McBannerman’s receptionist told us at yesterday’s appointment. I was very sorry to hear about it. He was a good man. He was very nice to us. He was helping us. And he told us about you. You’re a lawyer. I’m very sorry for your loss."
"Thank you," Jodie said. "But can you tell me about whatever it was he was helping you with?"
"Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?"
"Doesn’t it? Why not?"
"Well, because your father died," the woman said. "You see, I’m afraid he was really our last hope."
The way she said it, it sounded like she meant it. Her voice was low. There was a resigned fall at the end of the sentence, a sort of tragic cadence, like she’d given up on something long cherished and anticipated. Jodie pictured her, a bony hand holding the phone up to her face. a wet tear on a thin pale cheek.
"Maybe he wasn’t," she said. "Maybe I could help you."
There was a silence on the line. Just a faint hiss.
"Well, I don’t think so," the woman said. "I’m not sure it’s the kind of thing a lawyer would normally deal with, you see."
"What kind of thing is it?"
"I don’t think it matters now," the woman said again.
"Can’t you give me some idea?"
"No, I think it’s all over now," the woman said, like her old heart was breaking.
Then there was silence again. Jodie glanced out through the windshield at McBannerman’s office. "But how was my father able to help you? Was it something he especially knew about? Was it because he was in the Army? Is that what it was? Something connected with the Army?"
"Well, yes, it was. That’s why I’m afraid you wouldn’t be able to help us, as a lawyer. We’ve tried lawyers, you see. We need somebody connected with the Army, I think. But thank you very much for offering. It was very generous of you."
"There’s somebody else here," Jodie said. "He’s with me, right now. He used to work with my father, in the Army. He’d be willing to help you out, if he can."
There was silence on the line again. Just the same faint hiss, and breathing. Like the old woman was thinking. Like she needed time to adjust to some new considerations.
"His name is Major Reacher," Jodie said into the silence. "Maybe my father mentioned him? They served together for a long time. My father sent for him, when he realized he wouldn’t be able to carry on any longer."
"He sent for him?" the woman repeated.
"Yes, I think he thought he would be able to come and take over for him, you know, keep on with helping you out."
"Was this new person in the military police, too?"
"Yes, he was. Is that important?"
"I’m really not sure," the woman said.
She went quiet again. She was breathing close to the phone.
"Can he come here to our house?" she asked suddenly.
"We’ll both come," Jodie said. "Would you like us to come right away?"
There was silence again. Breathing, thinking.
"My husband’s just had his medication," the woman said. "He’s sleeping now. He’s very sick, you know."
Jodie nodded in the car. Opened and closed her spare hand in frustration.
"Mrs. Hobie, can’t you tell us what this is about?"
Silence. Breathing, thinking.
"I should let my husband tell you. I think he can explain it better than me. It’s a long story, and I sometimes get confused."
"OK, when will he wake up?" Jodie asked. "Should we come by a little later?"
There was another pause.
"He usually sleeps right through, after his medication," the old woman said. "It’s a blessing, really, I think. Can your father’s friend come first thing in the morning?"
HOBIE USED THE tip of his hook to press the intercom buzzer on his desk. Leaned forward and called through to his receptionist. He used the guy’s name, which was an unusual intimacy for Hobie, generally caused by stress.
"Tony?" he said. "We need to talk."
Tony came in from his brass-and-oak reception counter in the lobby and threaded his way around the coffee table to the sofa.
"It was Garber who went to Hawaii," he said.
"You sure?" Hobie asked him.
Tony nodded. "On American, White Plains to Chicago, Chicago to Honolulu, April fifteenth. Returned the next day, April sixteenth, same route. Paid by Amex. It’s all in their computer."
"But what did he do there?" Hobie said, more or less to himself.
"We don’t know," Tony muttered. "But we can guess, can’t we?"
There was an ominous silence in the office. Tony watched the unburned side of Hobie’s face, waiting for a response.
"I heard from Hanoi," Hobie said, into the silence.
"Christ, when?"
"Ten minutes ago."
"Jesus, Hanoi?" Tony said. "Shit, shit, shit."
"Thirty years," Hobie said. "And now it’s happened."
Tony stood up and walked around behind the desk. Used
his fingers to push two slats of the window blind apart. A bar of afternoon sunlight fell across the room.
"So you should get out now. Now it’s way, way too dangerous."
Hobie said nothing. He clasped his hook in the fingers of his left hand.
"You promised," Tony said urgently. "Step one, step two. And they’ve happened. Both steps have happened now, for God’s sake."
"It’ll still take them some time," Hobie said. "Won’t it? Right now, they still don’t know anything."
Tony shook his head. "Garber was no fool. He knew something. If he went to Hawaii, there was a good reason for it."
Hobie used the muscle in his left arm to guide the hook up to his face. He ran the smooth, cold steel over the scar tissue there. Time to time, pressure from the hard curve could relieve the itching.
"What about this Reacher guy?" he asked. "Any progress on that?"
Tony squinted out through the gap in the blind, eighty-eight floors up.
"I called St. Louis," he said. "He was a military policeman, too, served with Garber the best part of thirteen years. They’d had another inquiry on the same subject, ten days ago. I’m guessing that was Costello."
"So why?" Hobie asked. "The Garber family pays Costello to chase down some old Army buddy? Why? What the hell for?"
"No idea," Tony said. "The guy’s a drifter. He was digging swimming pools down where Costello was."
Hobie nodded, vaguely. He was thinking hard.
"A military cop," he said to himself. "Who’s now a drifter."
"You should get out," Tony said again.
"I don’t like the military police," Hobie said.
"I know you don’t."
"So what’s the interfering bastard doing here?"
"You should get out," Tony said for the third time.
Hobie nodded.
"I’m a flexible guy," he said. "You know that."
Tony let the blind fall back into place. The room went dark. "I’m not asking you to be flexible. I’m asking you to stick to what you planned all along."
"I changed the plan. I want the Stone score."
Tony came back around the desk and took his place on the sofa. "Too risky to stick around for it. Both calls are in now. Vietnam and Hawaii, for Christ’s sake."
"I know that," Hobie said. "So I changed the plan again."
"Back to what it was?"
Hobie shrugged and shook his head. "A combination. We get out, for sure, but only after I nail Stone."
Tony sighed and laid his hands palm-up on the upholstery. "Six weeks is way, way too long. Garber already went to Hawaii, for Christ’s sake. He was some kind of a hotshot general. And obviously he knew stuff, or why would he go out there?"
Hobie was nodding. His head was moving in and out of a thin shaft of light that picked up the crude gray tufts of his hair. "He knew stuff, I accept that. But he took sick and died. The stuff he knew died with him. Otherwise why would his daughter resort to some half-assed private dick and some unemployed drifter?"
"So what are you saying?"
Hobie slipped his hook below the level of the desktop and cupped his chin with his good hand. He let the fingers spread upward, over the scars. It was a pose he used subconsciously, when he was aiming to look accommodating and unthreatening.
"I can’t give up on the Stone score," he said. "You can see that, right? It’s just sitting there, begging to be eaten up. I give up on that, I couldn’t live with myself the whole rest of my life. It would be cowardice. Running is smart, I agree with you, but running too early, earlier than you really need to, that’s cowardice. And I’m not a coward, Tony, you know that, right?"
"So what are you saying?" Tony asked again.
"We do both things together, but accelerated. Because I agree with you, six weeks is way too long. We need to get out before six weeks. But we aren’t going without the Stone score, so we speed things up."